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If you live in the United States you have probably seen 1/10 and 1/16 scale RC cars from manufactures such as Traxxas, Losi, Team Associated, HPI, and more. However, there is a whole other class of RC cars that you might not be aware of. That is the 1/5 and 1/6 scale (or large scale) gas RC car. These cars have been around over seas and the USA for decades but in the USA they are rarely ever seen, where as over seas they are much more prevalent.

These cars don’t run on electric or nitro they run on gas, specifically a gas and two stroke engine oil mixture. That’s right, the same gas your car or lawn mower runs on. In fact, if you have a gas powered weed eater you have the very same type of engine that most of these cars propel themselves with. These model cars are much bigger than normal RC cars and are powered with engines ranging in size from 23cc to 30cc two stroke engines. You can get these models in various types including buggies, monster truck, or track cars; it all depends on your needs.

Here in the United States the most popular of the large scale RC car is quickly becoming the HPI Baja 5b. This is partly due to the fact that more local hobby shops are starting to carry it, and the ease of getting replacement parts. It comes in a number of configurations: Baja 5t RTR, Baja 5B 2.0 and SS, and the Baja 5b RTR. But there are many other manufactures of these great cars so before you settle on one over the other, take a look around at other manufactures such as FG, Redcat, Smarttech, and FS. They can all be found at reasonable price from places in the United States like largescalealloy, fgsupply, and davesmotors to name a few.

What’s so great about them?

With large scale RC cars the days of wet glow plugs and starter boxes are a thing of the past. These RC cars come with pull start engines and spark plugs. They are tough and some come with full disk breaks. Also say good bye to high price nitro fuel, at twelve dollars a quart this can quickly add up, and even at three dollars per gallon, gas is far cheaper. Another positive thing about gas fueled cars are their run times, 40 plus minutes of run time. That can be double and sometimes triple the run times of some electric or nitro cars, and they don’t need tuning every time you go out either. After the first tank or ‘break in’, you will want to tune the engine for maximum performance. The key thing here is that tuning them is very easily, usually requiring only minimal adjustments, and you only do it once. They don’t lose their tune, and the tune is much more abuse resistant unlike nitro engines. There is also no battery discharging, or cooling required before reuse like some electric cars.

What about speed?
If you’ve been running RC cars for any length of time this question seems to be the number one question, “how fast is it?”, and the answer is always the same, “well that depends”. Gas fueled cars are no different with respect to set up. Engine size, exhaust pipes, and gear ratios all factor in when getting that all too important top speed. When it comes to large scale, a three foot, 30lb car at 30-40mph is an awesome site. At 50mph it can get downright frightening. Keep in mind these cars are big, and high speeds are not always necessary to have fun with these models. So will your out of the box Traxxas Revo beat a FG 4wd baja buggy out of the box? Probably, but after the Traxxas Revo has run out of nitro, and your waiting for the engine to cool, the FG Baja will still be going strong.

The cons
So like everything in life I need to mention some of the cons. The first big one is price, the expensive initial investment in the cars, these guys are not cheap. Secondly, mixing fuel isn’t the most pleasant thing in the world, but thankfully you don’t have to do it often. Hop up parts are expensive and a little more difficult to get as these cars are not as popular as their 1/10 scale counterparts. Lastly, they are also quite noisy even over their nitro cousins.
So if you decide you would like to get into the world that is large scale RC, I think you will find that it is as much or more enjoyable as their smaller cousins.

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